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Member Clubs
On Your Honor
Take a step back in time at Clarke County’s
no-frills Millwood Country Club
by LEONARD SHAPIRO
I
ts members like to say they put the
“country” in the Millwood Country
Club, a charming and oh-so anachro-
nistic nine-hole private golf course
with enough different tee boxes all around
to play 18 truly unique regulation holes as
well as nine mor e on a par-3 layout. Nes-
tled between several farms in rural Clarke
County, about 15 miles east of Winchester,
they also keep it plain and simple, just as
most members prefer.
There is no fancy clubhouse, no food
service, no valet parking, no pro shop, and
no practice facility other than a turf tee in
front of a net and a small putting green.
There also are no starting times—simply
show up and tee off. And if there’s a group
or two on No. 1, just scoot off to another
hole and begin the round there.
Dogs are also more than welcome to
accompany members on the course, leash
or no leash, much to the dismay of the
occasional deer that wanders out of the
woods. And just about everything is done
on the honor system.
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Need a cart? Just sign in, grab a key,
and off you go. Bringing a guest? Add their
name on a clipboard nailed up in the cart
shed and enjoy. Looking for a cold brewski
after the round? There’s a well-stocked
fridge in the kitchen of the modest wood-
framed clubhouse—help yourself, as long
as you sign for that. But please, make sure
you clean up afterward.
“One of the things I like about it,” said
past president Emily Day, “is that it’s really
a microcosm of how a libertarian golf
course environment would work. We don’t
need a lot of rules. It’s each to their own. It
operates on the honor system.”
The golf course has been around since
the 1920s and is an offspring of what once
was known as The Blue Ridge Hunt, which
focused on fox hunting going all the way
back to the late 1800s.
In 1915, Roland Mitchell, a New Jersey
native, married Susan Page, who was born
at the nearby Saratoga Farm in Clarke
County. In time, Mitchell and his wife
moved their family to the Glen, an estate
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abutting Saratoga. Around 1915, Mitch-
ell, an avid golfer, persuaded the Blue
Ridge Club to relocate to a portion of the
Glen in the hopes that a golf course could
be established.
Susan later donated this land to the
club in her husband’s memory. Today’s
clubhouse stands on the portion of the
Glen the Mitchells gifted in 1917. The club
then leased property for a nine-hole golf
course from the Meadowbrook estate just
to the east of the clubhouse. Peter Mayo, a
Richmond native and ardent golfer himself
who lived nearby, provided funds for the
course construction.
By the middle 1920s, the clubhouse, a
frigid spring-fed swimming pool, and two
clay tennis courts were added. And in 1957,
the land leased for the golf course was pur-
chased and added to the club’s fold.
According to Andrew Stifler, another
past Millwood president, in the early
days of the golf course, the maintenance
for each of the nine fairways and greens
was the responsibility of nine different
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No starting times are needed for members of Millwood
Country Club. Show up, sign off on a cart and hit the
challenging nine-hole track in any order you want.